Have you heard about the gigantic rally being planned on Sunday, May 20th at Citi Field in Queens "to combat the evils of the Internet and the damages caused by advanced electronic devices"? No? Well, you guys, it's going to be HUGE. As some Israeli rabbis explained in an article called, "A Letter from our Masters the Great Men of Israel Shlita In Preparation for the International Conference in the U.S. Against the Scourge of Technology":

"This will be a mass rally never before seen in the history of Orthodox Jewry in the U.S. It will be a gathering of unity of all the Jews living in the U.S., a gathering to disseminate information and a prayer rally for the success of Klal-Israel's war on the Technology which threatens the sanctity of the homes of Israel."

THE INTERNET WON'T EVEN KNOW WHAT TO DO IN THE FACE OF SUCH UNITY! Oh, but wait. Betabeat pointed out today that this "gathering of unity of all of the Jews," which sounded a little ambitious to begin with, doesn't include 50% of the Jewish population.

If the threat of the Internet is so great, as the Ichud HaKehilos claims, how in the world can they make the marquee event for awareness and education about the Internet exclusively for men?! Are women not susceptible to the harms of the Internet? Should mothers of our children not be educated about the dangers of the Internet?

I honestly cannot fathom how the Ichud HaKehilos can say on the one hand that the Internet is so dangerous and then on the other hand exclude the mothers who are home with their children more than their fathers and the teenage girls who are just as present online as teenage boys. If anything, the girls have more access to computers and Internet than boys in yeshiva!

It's sadly unsurprising that the same group irrationally blaming the internet for unspecified "evils" feels fine discriminating against women in the name of tradition. Backwards people do backwards things.